“It’s a really beautiful, elegant cake, but inside we have a bunch of secret treats that are spilling out of the cake,” the Property Brothers star tells PEOPLE of the dessert at his May 12 wedding in Italy. The four-tier creation featured a gold herringbone pattern similar to the design of the floor in the couple’s home, and a cascade of biscuits with Scottish and Chinese symbols to serve as a “tribute to our heritage,” says Scott.
A broad array of skills and organizational tiers and functions are represented within each category. CMOs and other marketing executives such as chief experience officers and global brand managers increasingly operate as the orchestrators, assembling cross-functional teams from these three classes of talent to tackle initiatives. Orchestrators brief the teams, ensure that they have the capabilities and resources they need, and oversee performance tracking. To populate a team, the orchestrator and team leader draw from marketing and other functions as well as from outside agencies and consulting firms, balancing the mix of think, do, and feel capabilities in accordance with the team’s mission. (See the interactive exhibit “The Orchestrator Model.”)
Filled with banana cream, topped with peanut butter buttercream, and drizzled with chocolate, these cupcakes are outrageously rich. Skip the buttercream and turn these cupcakes into "muffins." You can use the base of the cupcake batter and add chopped pecans, shredded coconut and dried fruit for a morning pick-me up. These cupcakes are small but pack in flavor and texture with the banana cream filling and peanut butter buttercream hitting both sweet and savory notes.
At first, I wondered why marketing was a necessary component during product development, or a sales pitch, or retail distribution. But it makes sense when you think about it -- marketers have the firmest finger on the pulse of your consumer persona. They research and analyze your consumers all the time, conducting focus groups, sending out surveys, studying online shopping habits, and asking one underlying question: “Where, when, and how does our consumer want to communicate with our business?”
In addition to engaging customers and inspiring employees, a powerful and clear brand purpose improves alignment throughout the organization and ensures consistent messaging across touchpoints. AkzoNobel’s Dulux, one of the world’s leading paint brands, offers a case in point. In 2006, AkzoNobel was operating a heavily decentralized business structured around local markets, with each local business setting its own brand and business goals and developing its own marketing mix. Not surprisingly, the outcome was inconsistent brand positioning and results; Dulux soared in some markets and floundered in others. In 2008, Dulux’s new global brand team pursued a sweeping program to understand how people perceived the brand across markets, paint’s purpose in their lives, and the human truths that inspired people to color their environments. From China, to India, to the UK, to Brazil, a consistent theme emerged: The colors around us powerfully influence how we feel. Dulux wasn’t selling cans of paint; it was selling “tins of optimism.” This new definition of Dulux’s brand purpose led to a marketing campaign, “Let’s Color.” It enlists volunteers, which now include more than 80% of AkzoNobel employees, and donates paint (more than half a million liters so far) to revitalize run-down urban neighborhoods, from the favelas of Rio to the streets of Jodhpur. In addition to aligning the once-decentralized marketing organization, Dulux’s purpose-driven approach has expanded its share in many markets.
This buttermilk crumb cake is a breakfast favorite when guests arrive. To make one day ahead: just bake, cool completely, and cover pan tightly in in aluminum foil. For an even more decadent treat, make this delicious glaze to drizzle over the cooled cake: Combine 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 3 teaspoons milk, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla in a small bowl; and stir until smooth.

Marketing communications mix is used to reach, engage, provoke audience-centered conversations. It consists of 5 tools, which are 1)Advertising, 2)Sales & Promotion, 3)Public Relations, 4)Direct Marketing and 5)Personal Selling. The types of messages that are enhanced can be 1)Informational, 2)Emotional, 3)User-generated, or/and 4)Brand content. The last main component of MC mix is Media, which corresponds to the channel used to send the message. Media is divided into 3 categories, and these are media by 1)Form, 2)Source and 3)Functionality.

My hopes were quickly dashed in my quest for some “meat”, something of genuine value, something I could put to use in my daily job as a marketer. Unfortunately, the book Is really just a continuous string of Mr. Godin’s rambings on various topics he’s discussed in previous works. All of a sudden I was skipping huge swaths of examples and musings in the hope of finding something useful. I know Mr. Godin has a lot of useful advice and insights, but I just couldn’t find anything I could sink my teeth into in this particular book.
McCormick, the spices and flavorings firm, emphasizes both depth and breadth in delivering on its promise to “push the art, science, and passion of flavor.” It creates a consistent experience for consumers across numerous physical and digital touchpoints, such as product packaging, branded content like cookbooks, retail stores, and even an interactive service, FlavorPrint, that learns each customer’s taste preferences and makes tailored recipe recommendations. FlavorPrint does for recipes what Netflix has done for movies; its algorithm distills each recipe into a unique flavor profile, which can be matched to a consumer’s taste-preference profile. FlavorPrint can then generate customized e-mails, shopping lists, and recipes optimized for tablets and mobile devices.
Marketing has become too important to be left just to the marketers in a company. We say this not to disparage marketers but to underscore how holistic marketing now is. To deliver a seamless experience, one informed by data and imbued with brand purpose, all employees in the company, from store clerks and phone center reps to IT specialists and the marketing team itself, must share a common vision.
Companies are increasingly enhancing the value of their products by creating customer experiences. Some deepen the customer relationship by leveraging what they know about a given customer to personalize offerings. Others focus on the breadth of the relationship by adding touchpoints. Our research shows that high-performing brands do both—providing what we call “total experience.” In fact, we believe that the most important marketing metric will soon change from “share of wallet” or “share of voice” to “share of experience.”
A firm's marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale. These are typically economic, social, political or technological phenomena. A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis. Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyze national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.
The first stage is called the "ideation stage," where the idea for the product or service is conceived. Before products go to the market, companies must decide what styles, sizes, flavors, and scents they should sell and the packaging designs they should use. Then, marketing departments usually test new product concepts with focus groups and surveys to ascertain interest levels among potential buyers and refine certain elements.

Marketing has become too important to be left just to the marketers in a company. We say this not to disparage marketers but to underscore how holistic marketing now is. To deliver a seamless experience, one informed by data and imbued with brand purpose, all employees in the company, from store clerks and phone center reps to IT specialists and the marketing team itself, must share a common vision.

"Young companies have to get the word out, but they also can go broke doing it. A decade ago, America Online spent so much money flooding the planet with free trial software that it tried to mask the bleeding by capitalizing those expenses on its balance sheet. (Regulators later nixed that accounting treatment, wiping out millions in accounting profits.) What percentage of sales should go toward marketing? As with sales, there is no one rule of thumb."

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